“Legacy media” is the new hard-right buzz-phrase, the new bugaboo. “Legacy media” has become shorthand for any print or broadcast media outlet that strives to uphold the pre-internet standards of journalism, which are perceived in far-right circles as an oppressive power structure driven to muzzle dissent (and possibly dominate global politics and commerce for evil purposes as a dastardly international conspiracy of “cosmopolitan,” wine-drinking, NPR-listening elitists). If you hear a politician or random internet billionaire throwing around the words “legacy media,” you can be fairly certain they’ve been enjoying strip steaks and baked potatoes at Mar-a-Lago at a table with Marine Le Pen, J.D. Vance, and Viktor Orban.
We’re nothing here at The Star if not “legacy media.” And it’s company we’re still proud to keep: itty-bitty us and PBS, The New York Times, the BBC, Le Monde, Paris Match. . . .
It was a bit sigh-inducing, if less than surprising, that Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that Meta would be ditching its old system of third-party, independent fact-checking to turn the monitoring of, you know, truth and facts ’n’ stuff over to the baying masses of his social media platforms. What could possibly go wrong when the world’s biggest media company eradicates the fact-checkers?
Mr. Zuckerberg, citing the sea change of the November presidential election, said the decision was necessary because “governments and legacy media” had over the last decade pushed Facebook and Instagram to “censor more and more.” Instead of “legacy media,” Mr. Zuckerberg believes, the American people are better off getting their news, science, and medical information from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and Substack.
“This is cool,” Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s quasi-official First Buddy and the world’s richest man, tweeted in response to Meta’s big no-fact-checkers news.
Did you see that Mr. Musk changed his name to Kekius Maximus for a stint last week on his X profile, switching his profile picture to that of Pepe the Frog? If you don’t know who Pepe the Frog is, or what “kek” means, well, suffice it to say that around the time Donald Trump was elected the first time, Pepe became the totally hilarious cartoon mascot of white nationalists on non-”legacy media” platforms like The Daily Stormer, neo-Nazis’ answer to TMZ, and among the racist buffoon-arazzi on 4Chan.
Mr. Musk — the world’s richest troll, the world’s richest overbearing boob you knew in college who talked a wee bit too much about eugenics and Ayn Rand — has announced he will, on his own social media site, X, soon be hosting Alice Weidel, the leader of the extremely creepy and hard-right-nationalist Alternative for Germany party, for a cozy conversation about her run for chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
“Ten years ago, who would have imagined that the owner of one of the world’s largest social networks would be supporting a new international reactionary movement and intervening directly in elections, including in Germany?” Emmanuel Macron said, referring to Musk, on Monday. Tellement vrai, M. Macron. Who’d have thunk it?
Brace yourself, world. The Galactic Empire of Trolls has taken the controls.